More on Micromedia¶
As with the previous post on micromedia and de-localization, this one is not aiming to be anything but obvious. If the trends indicated here do not seem uncontroversial, it has gone wrong. The sole topic is an unmistakable occurrence.
The term ‘micromedia’ is comparatively self-explanatory. It refers to Internet-based peer-to-peer communication systems, accessed increasingly through mobile devices. The relevant contrast is with broadcast (or ‘macro-‘) media, where a relatively small number of concentrated hubs distribute standardized content to massive numbers of information consumers. The representative micromedia system and platform is the Twitter + smartphone combination, which serves as the icon for a much broader, and already substantially implemented, techno-cultural transformation.
Besides de-localization, micromedia do several prominent things. They tend to diffuse media content production, as part of a critically significant technological and economic wave that envelops many kinds of disintermediation, with the development of e-publishing as one remarkable instance. By ushering in a new pamphlet age, these innovations support an explosion of ideological diversity (among many other things). No mainstream media denunciation of Neoreaction is complete without noting explicitly that “the Internet” is breeding monsters, as it frays into micromedia opportunities. (In all of this, Bitcoin will be huge.)
No less widely commented upon is the compression of attention spans within the micromedia shock-wave. Fragmentation and tight feedback loops re-work the brain, producing Attention Deficit Disorders that can seem merely pathological. Once again, the twitter-smartphone combo provides the iconic form (right now), splintering discussion into tweets, making interactivity a near-continuous agitation, and perpetually dragging cognition out of geo-social ‘meat-space’ into a flickering text screen. Read a book and then comment upon it? That wavelength has nearly gone. It’s easy to see why this tendency would be decried.
… but, if this isn’t going to stop (and I don’t think it will), then adaptation becomes imperative. We don’t have to like it (yet), but we probably need to learn to like it, if we’re going to get anywhere, or even nowhere (in particular). Whoever learns fastest to function in this sped-out environment has the future in their grasp. The race is on.
Much more on this (I’m guessing confidently) to come …